1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an input/output byte control device using a nonvolatile ferroelectric register, and more specifically, to a technology for changing input/output bytes of a memory device depending on program commands with a nonvolatile ferroelectric register.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, a ferroelectric random access memory (hereinafter, referred to as ‘FRAM’) has attracted considerable attention as next generation memory device because it has a data processing speed as fast as a Dynamic Random Access Memory DRAM and conserves data even after the power is turned off.
The FRAM having structures similar to the DRAM includes the capacitors made of a ferroelectric substance, so that it utilizes the characteristic of a high residual polarization of the ferroelectric substance in which data is not deleted even after an electric field is eliminated.
The technical contents on the above FRAM are disclosed in the Korean Patent Application No. 2002-85533 by the same inventor of the present invention. Therefore, the basic structure and the operation on the FRAM are not described herein.
The conventional memory device inputs/outputs bits or bytes of data accessed by one address through a data input/output buffer. The memory device loads bits or bytes of data by a system bus.
In the conventional memory device, when required data is a part of bits or bytes, the rest bits or bytes are used to drive the bus unnecessarily. As a result, a bandwidth of the whole system bus is wasted by the rest bits or bytes.
In addition, the conventional memory device has a fixed memory input/output data width. Therefore, the conventional memory device cannot be applied to various systems of different bandwidths. If a conventional memory having a different bandwidth from a system is to be used additional interface equipment is required so that the conventional memory device may become compatible with the system.